From the neck up he was something the pathologists threw out. It looked as if he'd been worked over with a crowbar - the entire front part of what used to be his face was caved in - but it was really impossible to know what the swollen bloody lump attached to his shoulders had been subjected to, so advanced was the state of decay.
Milo began throwing open windows and I realized that the house felt as hot as a blast furnace, fueled by the hydrocarbons emitted by decomposing organic matter. A quick answer to the energy crisis: Save kilowatts, kill a friend…
I couldn't take any more. I ran for the door, gasping and flung away the handkerchief when I reached the outdoors. I gulped hungrily at the cool night air. My hands shook.
There was lots of excitement on the block now. Neighbors - men, women and children - had come out of their castles, pausing in the middle of the evening news, interrupting their defrosted feasts to gawk at the blinking crimson lights and listen to the stuttering radio static of the squad car, staring at the coroner's van that had pulled up to the curb with the cold authority of a parading despot. A few kids rode their bikes up and down the street. Mumbling voices took on the sound of ravaging locusts. A dog barked. Welcome to suburbia.
I wondered where they'd all been when someone had gotten into Bruno's house, battered him into jelly, closed all the windows and left him to rot.
Milo finally came out, looking green. He sat on the front steps and hung his head between his knees. Then he got up and called the attendants from the coroner's office over. They had come prepared, with gas masks and rubber gloves. They went in with an empty stretcher and came out carrying something wrapped in a black plastic sheath.
"Ugh. Gross," said a teenage girl to her friend.
It was as eloquent a way to put it as any.
12
Three mornings after we discovered the butchery of Bruno, Milo wanted to come over to review the salesman's psychiatric file in detail. I postponed it until the afternoon. Motivated by instincts that were unclear to me, I called Andre Jaroslav at his studio in West Hollywood and asked him if he had time to help me refresh my karate skills.
"Doctor," he said, the accent as thick as goulash, "such a long time since I see you."
"I know, Andre. Too long. I've let myself go. But I hope you can help me."
He laughed.
"Tsk, tsk. I have intermediate group at eleven and private lessons at twelve. Then I am going to Hawaii, Doctor. To choreograph fight scenes for new television pilot. Girl police person who knows judo and catches rapists. What do you think?"
"Very original."
"Ya. I get to work with the redheaded chickie - this Shandra Layne. To teach her how to throw around large men. Like Wonder Woman, ya?"
"Ya. Do you have any time before eleven?"
"For you, Doctor - certainly. We get you in shape. Come at nine and I give you two hours."
The Institute of Martial Arts was located on Santa Monica at Doheny, next to the Troubador nightclub. It was an L.A. institution, predating the Kung Fu craze by fifteen years. Jaroslav was a bandy - legged Czech Jew who'd escaped during the fifties. He had a high, squeaky voice that he attributed to having been shot in the throat by the Nazis. The truth was that he'd been born with the vocal register of a hysterical capon. It hadn't been easy, being a squeaky - voiced Jew in postwar Prague. Jaroslav had developed his own way of coping. Starting as a boy he taught himself physical culture, weight - lifting and the arts of self - defense. By the time he was in his twenties he had total command of every martial arts doctrine from saber - fencing to hopkaido, and a lot of bullies received painful surprises.
He greeted me at the door, naked from the waist up, a spray of daffodils in his hand. The sidewalk was filled with anorectic individuals of ambiguous gender, hugging guitar cases as if they were life preservers, dragging deeply on cigarettes and regarding the passing traffic with spaced - out apprehension.
"Audition," he squeaked, pointing a finger at the door to the Troubador and glancing at them scornfully. "The artisans of a new age, Doctor."
We went into the studio, which was empty. He placed the flowers in a vase. The practice room was an expanse of polished oak floor bordered by whitewashed walls. Autographed photographs of stars and near - stars hung in clusters. I went into a dressing room with the set of stiff white garments he gave me and emerged looking like an extra in a Bruce Lee movie.
Jaroslav was silent, letting his body and his hands talk. He positioned me in the center of the studio and stood facing me. He smiled faintly, we bowed to each other and he led me through a series of warm - up exercises that made my joints creak. It had been a long time.
When the introductory katas were through, we bowed again. He smiled, then proceeded to wipe the floor with me. At the end of one hour I felt as if I'd been stuffed down a garbage disposal. Every muscle fiber ached, every synapse quivered in exquisite agony.
He kept it up, smiling and bowing, sometimes letting out a perfectly controlled, high - pitched scream, tossing me around like a bean bag. By the end of the second hour, pain had ceased to be obtrusive - it had become a way of life, a state of consciousness. But when we stopped I was starting to feel in command of my body once again. I was breathing hard, stretching, blinking. My eyes burned as the perspiration dripped into them. Jaroslav looked as if he'd just finished reading the morning paper.
"You take a hot bath, Doctor, get some chickie to massage you, use a little witch hazel. And remember: practice, practice, practice."
"I will, Andre."
"You call me when I get back, in a week. I tell you about Shandra Layne and check if you've been practicing." He poked a finger in my gut, playfully.
"It's a deal."
He held out his hand. I reached out to take it, then tensed, wondering if he was going to throw me again.
"Ya, good," he said. Then he laughed and let me go
The throbbing agony made me feel righteous and ascetic. I had lunch at a restaurant run by one of the dozens of quasi - Hindu cults that seem to prefer Los
Angeles to Calcutta. A vacant - eyed, perpetually smiling girl swaddled in white robes and burnoose took my order. She had a rich kid's face coupled with the mannerisms of a nun and managed to smile while she talked, smile as she wrote, smile as she walked away. I wondered if it hurt.
I finished a plate heaped with chopped lettuce, sprouts, refried soya beans and melted goat cheese on chapati bread - a sacred tost ada - and washed it down with two glasses of pineapple - coconut - guava nectar imported from the holy desert of Mojave. The bill came to ten dollars and thirty - nine cents. That explained the smiles.
I made it back to the house just as Milo pulled up in an unmarked bronze Matador.
"The Fiat finally died," he explained. "I'm having it cremated and scattering the ashes over the offshore rigs in Long Beach."
"My condolences." I picked up Bruno's file.
"Contributions to the down payment on my next lemon will be accepted in lieu of flowers."
"Get Dr. Silverman to buy you one."
"I'm working on it."
He let me read for a few minutes then asked, "So what do you think?"
"No profound insights. Bruno was referred to Handler by the Probation Department after the bad check bust. Handler saw him a dozen times over a four - month period. When the probationary period was over so was the treatment. One thing I did notice was that Handler's notes on him are relatively benign. Bruno was one of the more recently acquired patients. At the time he started therapy, Handler was at his nastiest, yet there are no vicious comments about him. Here, in the beginning Handler calls him a 'slick con man." " I flipped some pages. "A couple of weeks later he makes a crack about Bruno's "Cheshire grin." But after that, nothing."